BOOK REVIEW Durán rose from the gutters to be a true king of the ring
HE’S WIDELY regarded as one of the best boxers of all time, and has numerous world championships and a host of individual accolades to prove it. And given where he came from, that’s some achievement for Roberto Durán whose professional career in the ring spanned an incredible five decades, from the late sixties to the early noughties.
Written in the first person, the book starts on an attention-grabbing note as we learn that the pride of Panama was clinically dead for 30 seconds on an operating theatre in Buenos Aires after a car accident in 2001.
Incredibly, he was still fighting at that stage at the age of 50, but that close shave finally convinced him to call time on a glittering career which saw him crowned a world champion on six separate occasions, and in four different weight divisions.
Given the start he had in life, those achievements are incredible. Durán grew up in a tough barrio called El Chorrillo in Panama City, and survived from day-to-day as a street kid.
That basically involved doing what was needed to survive, and helping to put food on his family’s table after his father left home when Durán was 18 months old.
His many jobs included delivering newspapers and shining shoes, while he also stole mangoes from one of the city’s more well to do suburbs and brought them back to his own area.
For the most part though, Durán managed to stay on the straight and narrow, and his talent as a street fighter gradually developed into something more until he moved to America and had some memorable duels with fellow legends such as Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns.
‘I am a child of the streets. My neighbours were thieves, whores and murderers,’ he writes, and as the story unfolds you’ll realise he isn’t exaggerating.
Quite apart from the finer details of his boxing career, Durán’s complicated personal life makes this an absorbing story, the type to leave the reader wondering what’s coming next as the pages are turned. Although spiritual to some extent and clearly grateful for the role God played in his successes and in saving his life after that accident, his own conduct contradicted those beliefs but he makes no apologies.
He has been with his long-time wife, Fula, since she was 14, but as well as their five children he has also fathered three more by three different women. Incredibly though, he shows no remorse.
‘As world champion, as one of the most famous and honoured men in Panama, I’ve been around temptation every day, and I’m not going to say sorry for the things I’ve done,’ he declares.
Durán was renowned for his phenomenal punching power in the ring, especially at close quarters, and this earned him the nickname of ‘Manos de Piedra’ or ‘Hands of Stone’.
The one thing he lacked in his career was discipline, and this was particularly evident in the non-stop parties that followed all of his fights. Everything was done to excess, with Durán assisted every step of the way by his ‘manzanillos’, an entourage of hangers-on who shared his love for women and drink.
He maintains that it’s God’s law for boxing champions to come from the gutters rather than from rich neighbourhoods, and there’s no better example than Durán.
This book was hard to put down at times, and you won’t have to be a big boxing fan to find it engrossing. ALAN AHERNE Visit The Book Centre on Wexford’s Main Street for the very best selection of sports books.